Hello,

as stated by the standard the fstream derivatives expect a const char*
parameter indicating the file name associated with the stream to be opened.
I wondered why there is no constructor accepting a const string& parameter,
which forces the user to convert any filename to an old C-style string
before passing it to the constructor. Is this simply a historical reason or
is there some deeper problem, which I might fail to see. Probably somebody
could shed some light on this issue.

Thanks
Chris


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"Chris Theis" <Chris.Theis@nospam.cern.ch> wrote:
> before passing it to the constructor. Is this simply a historical reason or
> is there some deeper problem, which I might fail to see. Probably somebody

Failing to see a "deeper problem", I believe it is for historical reasons.

-Gerhard
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"Chris Theis" wrote:
> Hello,
>
> as stated by the standard the fstream derivatives expect a const char*
> parameter indicating the file name associated with the stream to be opened.
> I wondered why there is no constructor accepting a const string& parameter,
> which forces the user to convert any filename to an old C-style string
> before passing it to the constructor. Is this simply a historical reason or
> is there some deeper problem, which I might fail to see. Probably somebody
> could shed some light on this issue.

Historical (<iostream> and the STL came from different sources and were
incompletely merged), should be fixed in the next standard.

HTH,
Michiel Salters

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Michiel.Salters@tomtom.com wrote:
> "Chris Theis" wrote:
>
> Historical (<iostream> and the STL came from different sources and were
> incompletely merged), should be fixed in the next standard.

Do you mean by introducing c'tors for std::string or (even better, I
think), the support of tr2::path? For everyone interested, I speak of
the promising proposal:

http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2005/n1889.html#header-fstream

Greetings from Bremen,

Daniel

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Michiel.Salters@tomtom.com wrote:
> Historical (<iostream> and the STL came from different sources and were
> incompletely merged), should be fixed in the next standard.

What has 'std::string' to do with either the IOStream library or STL?
It came from neither of these sources...
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Dietmar Kuehl schrieb:
> What has 'std::string' to do with either the IOStream library or STL?
> It came from neither of these sources...

This is of course correct - notwithstanding the C++ standards commitee
tried to blend the different parts of the C++ runtime ("old" runtime
components like string, iostreams library and STL for example) as
seamlessly together as possible - just consider the iterator like member
functions that have been added to string for that purpose (like begin(),
end() and such). Therefore I also have to conclude that the non existent
ctor for an iostream that takes a string for a filename is an oversight
by the commitee.

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